About PrivacyNet

Privacy, data security, piracy. They are all major issues that affect content producers, creatives and startups. PrivacyNet presents compelling sources and the latest about developments in these fields. It is produced by Gordon Platt, an attorney, a former Emmy Award winning investigative journalist and founder of Gotham Media, a content marketing and strategic communications company.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year… especially if you’re a pirate site, eager to relieve hurried and stressed shoppers of their gift dollars!

Counterfeit goods are not a new phenomenon, but their online incarnations are recent enough to be misleading for some consumers. In particular, anyone unfamiliar with streaming services or app stores could easily be duped by some of the more carefully crafted operations out there.

This week, the Copyright Alliance released tips for online consumers concerned about the legality of products they want to buy. Among the pointers they offer are the following helpful guidelines:

Be wary of extreme bargains on digital content, especially if it is deeply discounted against other sources you find. 99 cent downloads of entire albums are unlikely to be legit, so quit that site and find a legal alternative!

Look for the following security indicators on sites you buy from, which typically help to indicate a reputable seller:

accepts major credit cards

accepts common online payment processors like PayPal

contains the https: prefix (and usually a lock symbol) in your browser’s address bar, which shows the data you send for any transaction is encrypted.

Look for spelling mistakes, unclear imagery, poor print quality, and other basic errors that can indicate counterfeit artwork or packaging.

Research your product on several sites before making your purchase.Make use of databases on sites like www.wheretowatch.com and www.whymusicmatters.com to find multiple legitimate sources for movies, music, and TV shows.

Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of Copyright Alliance, had this to say about the organization’s move to warn consumers about the dangers of online holiday shopping:

“Sites selling pirated and counterfeit merchandise have become savvy at portraying themselves as legitimate online retailers selling genuine products. Those who ignore this advice may find that their gifts are the type that keep on giving for all the wrong reasons.”

Whether it’s a digital gift or physical product, no one wants to receive a knock-off for Christmas.

Use these pointers and other resources from the Copyright Alliance site to make sure all the gifts you buy this holiday season are legit!

This time last year, soccer’s governing body FIFA took on the Herculean task of investigating itself for signs of corruption and, to the relief of everyone (at FIFA), came out clean. Fast forward twelve months and the organization has been charged and humiliated by numerous investigations, most of which center around serious fraud and leading its stakeholders astray.

We can only hope a similar will reveal the hubris of Google, which this week received an award for “protecting digital rights.”

Google’s Error page (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That would be all well and good, were it not for the fact that the group giving the award is headed up by one Eric Schmidt.

Yes, the same Eric Schmidt who is executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and who played a massive role in shaping Google itself for a full decade. The similarities with an organization that claims itself to be a force for good, as it profits at the expense of those who finance its business affairs are not a huge stretch of the imagination.

The parallels with legitimate European fraud investigations aren’t unwarranted, either.

Google is under intense scrutiny from many EU member states, not only for its negative impact on the region’s privacy laws, but for allegations of antitrust. Legal action dating back to 2010 has hounded Google in Europe, where competitors based in the region say it has used its position as dominant search engine to serve up results that make sure consumers find shopping and service offerings owned by or linked to Google.

This doesn’t even touch upon the disdain with which Google approaches fighting copyright infringement, i.e. protecting the digital rights of creators. For a company that is “award-winning” in the protection of our online rights, it seems odd that Google would pay such short shrift to the daily breaches of those rights that appear most prominently in its own search results and displayed on YouTube, which it also owns.

By now, it should be clear that Google has only a narrow sphere of rights to protect, all of them being its own. Initiatives that appear to be in the public interest are more often than not one of two things: 1) smoke and mirrors for a business venture or 2) a PR play to support the company’s increasingly powerful lobbying wing.

This award, and indeed the think-tank awarding it, are nothing more than the latter, as anyone outside of Mountain View can plainly see.

A court in Belgium has ruled that Facebook must stop tracking visitors who have not signed up for – or into – its service. The social network now has until Wednesday to respond to the decision, which it is widely expected to appeal.

Français : Bouton « J’aime pas Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The ruling arises from a case brought by the Belgian Privacy Commission, which is on record labeling Facebook’s collection and use of non-user data as “disrespectful.”

This description refers to a file installed as visitors view any page on the social network, even if they never sign up to the service. The country’s regulatory body wants to make that tracking something that visitors must actively agree to before the social network can start to follow them around the web and, more importantly, use that flow of data to the advantage of its related services and advertisers.

Although the case concerns a tracking “cookie” that Facebook has been using across Europe – and indeed globally – for years, the region’s privacy laws are much tighter than those in North America. For that reason, many governments around the EU are closely scrutinizing their legal options to force the California-based company to comply with their local privacy requirements.

Appeals notwithstanding, it appears that the Belgian authorities have been successful in their argument that it is mandatory for Facebook to obtain consent before collecting and storing such information. While the information itself is limited, when combined with other data it can be a powerful tool for advertisers to target offers to the user. It is the principle that the Belgian Privacy Commission is challenging in court, but the practical application that really impacts a user’s online experience.

Facebook is no stranger to privacy complaints, especially in Europe. Germany is currently engaged in a legal tug-of-war related the company’s real names policy, while last year was littered with allegations of privacy invasions that set the stage for this year’s legal battles.

How far the social network will go to prevent limits on its lucrative data gathering operation remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the battle lines have been drawn during 2015.

Given that Facebook’s business model is heavily reliant on harvesting user data, like Google and other prominent US companies that play fast and loose with privacy law, it’s unlikely they’ll give up their claim to our info without a fight.

Google is undoubtedly one of the most important innovators of the last two decades. From streamlining the way we find things online to helping define the mobile market and making sense of all the data in between, there are few companies who have done more to develop a smart, efficient infrastructure for the digital world.

So with that storied hisory of inventive thinking – not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars brought in on the back of it – why does Google’s innovation and flair for algorithmic solutions fail every time copyright comes into the equation?

It’s a question raised in David Newhoff’s excellent dissection of the Google Books legal case, in which he explains why authors are in favor of the innovation, yet opposed to Google’s plan to force them to waive rights and provide access to their published works for free.

The search giant’s stated objections are based on the difficulty of securing so many licenses for work under copyright, but as Newhoff neatly sums up:

“If you’ve got both the resources…to digitize every book on the planet, securing even a large number of rights should be a relatively minor function of the overall project.”

As the article states, Google processes 20 petabytes of data every day. If that term isn’t familiar to you, you’re not alone. It describes amounts of data so large that no average consumer, even those well versed in the latest tech, would readily be able to quantify it (1,000,000,000 megabytes, for you trivia fans).

In its lifetime, Google ‘s search service has developed from storage on ten 4GB hard drives in a Lego casing, to a vast network of data servers with over 100 million GB of data, spread across three continents. This is the operation that wants us to believe it can create a comprehensive digital library, yet can’t handle the logistics of licensing those titles with those who own the rights?

The same complaint can be extended to curbing copyright infringement in Google’s search results.

The company continues to drag its heels on almost every major anti-piracy measure, from preventing sites like Popcorn Time appearing in its results to ensuring that piracy by the backdoor on YouTube is handled as swiftly as direct uploads of content that infringes copyright.

This ongoing neglect of its responsibility to content owners, whose work Google’s profits are partially built upon, is made only more objectionable when the company plays dumb regarding its abilities. Any company that stands on innovation must apply that to every problem it faces, not just those that will make it some money.

No rightsholders have the vast resources of Google, nor are they asking for the kinds of profit the company sees. They don’t want to prevent Google from driving innovative projects forwards, nor do they object to it creating new initiatives based on their intellectual property.

All they want, whether in the case of authors asking for compensation from Google Books or artists asking that Google search does not enable piracy links to be even more visible, is to see intellectual property respected. If a piece of content is under copyright, make sure that the source is legal and the work has been licensed for use. Google would ask the same for its unique algorithms and anything it has patented, so why should the situation be different for original music, movies, books, or any creative work that should be protected under copyright law?

Far from being a question of creators standing in the way of innovation, this is a case of Google’s selective application of that very trait. Armed with the right motivation, be it profit or a potential penalty from a court of law, you can be sure Google would quickly find the resources and innovation to curb piracy or compensate authors.

If you thought Aurous was in big trouble before, crank up the Bachman Turner Overdrive, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The fledging music “service,” which appeared a little more than two weeks ago, has already been sued for copyright infringement and launched possibly the most ludicrous PR campaign since Kim Dotcom’s attempt to position himself as an innovation-fueled entrepreneur.

Now, perhaps trying to win the award for shortest-lived piracy site in history, co-founder Andrew Sampson appears to have breached a court order prohibiting Aurous to go any further before it answers the legal challenge. Rather than complying with this basic order, over the weekend Aurous Group accounts made clear that the site’s underlying software had been made available on Github, a popular site for software developers to share and build on existing code.

If the allegation is upheld, as it surely would be given the brazen nature of the Github availability announcement across the Aurous social media profiles, Aurous will be held in contempt of court, digging the group behind it even deeper into the legal mire.

It’s hard to know where to start with the ludicrous claims that Aurous makes about its reason to exist at all. It basically apes existing legal services but fails to license the music it serves up, which is why it took no time at all for rightsholders and authorities to require Aurous to cease operations. One crystal clear example of this comes when we juxtapose the following statement from the organization’s legal counsel, with the content of the Aurous home page:

“Aurous in no way encourages, the downloading or playing of copyrighted music.” –Aurous Group

If it has no desire to encourage listening to unlicensed content, why does the service’s home page (pictured right) use the debut album from Chvrches as its prime example of the Aurous player in action?

The band is signed to Virgin Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group and one of the parties suing Aurous in the first place, so it seems unlikely that this particular title is a legitimate use.

From clarifying that Aurous is a piracy site, pure and simple, let’s move on to its founders’ motivations for providing unlicensed music…

If the varied trials of Tidal and, more recently, Apple Music have taught us anything, it’s that the average music listener doesn’t need complexity, just convenience. Features like curated radio programs, integrated social networks, or the kind of customizable interface touted by Aurous, are merely distractions for mainstream listeners.

Most people want to fire up an app in a few seconds, find the song they want, have it available on any device, and start listening. All of the paid subscription services out there achieve that for between $4.99 and $9.99 per month, so what is the real issue that Aurous is trying to solve?

As with most piracy-based models, it comes down to building a business off the hard work of others.

Strip away all the ridiculous claims to @standwithartists (by paying them nothing?) or developing the next generation of music service (by building a knock-off Spotify?) and Aurous is nothing but a desperate developer trying to get away with offering unlicensed content.

The principal difference for Andrew Sampson is that unlike rogue coders in far-flung corners of the world, he operates right here in the USA. Now with a major lawsuit and the legal requirement to answer for his actions, it’s fair to say that Sampson won’t have nearly as much time to pursue his dream of ripping off artists